Pausanias, the Spartan by Lord Lytton

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PAUSANIAS, THE SPARTAN.

THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS.

An Unfinished Historical Romance

BY

THE LATE LORD LYTTON

EDITED BY HIS SON

Dedication

TO

THE REV. BENJAMIN HALL KENNEDY, D.D.

CANON OF ELY,

AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

* * * * *

MY DEAR DR. KENNEDY,

Revised by your helpful hand, and corrected by your accurate
scholarship, to whom may these pages be so fitly inscribed as to that
one of their author's earliest and most honoured friends,[1] whose
generous assistance has enabled me to place them before the public in
their present form?

It is fully fifteen, if not twenty, years since my father commenced
the composition of an historical romance on the subject of Pausanias,
the Spartan Regent. Circumstances, which need not here be recorded,
compelled him to lay aside the work thus begun. But the subject
continued to haunt his imagination and occupy his thoughts. He detected
in it singular opportunities for effective exercise of the gifts most
peculiar to his genius; and repeatedly, in the intervals of other
literary labour, he returned to the task which, though again and again
interrupted, was never abandoned. To that rare combination of the
imaginative and practical faculties which characterized my father's
intellect, and received from his life such varied illustration, the
story of Pausanias, indeed, briefly as it is told by Thucydides and
Plutarch, addressed itself with singular force. The vast conspiracy of
the Spartan Regent, had it been successful, would have changed the
whole course of Grecian history. To any student of political phenomena,
but more especially to one who, during the greater part of his life,
had been personally engaged in active politics, the story of such a
conspiracy could not fail to be attractive. To the student of human
nature the character of Pausanias himself offers sources of the
deepest interest; and, in the strange career and tragic fate of the
great conspirator, an imagination fascinated by the supernatural must
have recognized remarkable elements of awe and terror. A few months
previous to his death, I asked my father whether he had abandoned all
intention of finishing his romance of "Pausanias." He replied, "On the
contrary, I am finishing it now," and entered, with great animation,
into a discussion of the subject and its capabilities. This reply to my
inquiry surprised and impressed me: for, as you are aware, my father was
then engaged in the simultaneous composition of two other and very
different works, "Kenelm Chillingly" and the "Parisians." It was the
last time he ever spoke to me about Pausanias; but from what he then
said of it I derived an impression that the book was all but completed,
and needing only a few finishing touches to be ready for publication at
no distant date.

This impression was confirmed, subsequent to my father's death, by a
letter of instructions about his posthumous papers which accompanied
his will. In that letter, dated 1856, special allusion is made to
Pausanias as a work already far advanced towards its conclusion.

You, to whom, in your kind and careful revision of it, this unfinished
work has suggested many questions which, alas, I cannot answer, as
to the probable conduct and fate of its fictitious characters, will
readily understand my reluctance to surrender an impression seemingly
so well justified. I did not indeed cease to cherish it, until
reiterated and exhaustive search had failed to recover from the
"wallet" wherein Time "puts alms for oblivion," more than those few
imperfect fragments which, by your valued help, are here arranged in
such order as to carry on the narrative of Pausanias, with no solution
of continuity, to the middle of the second volume.

There the manuscript breaks off. Was it ever continued further? I know
not. Many circumstances induce me to believe that the conception had
long been carefully completed in the mind of its author; but he has
left behind him only a very meagre and imperfect indication of the
course which, beyond the point where it is broken, his narrative was
intended to follow. In presence of this fact I have had to choose
between the total suppression of the fragment, and the publication
of it in its present form. My choice has not been made without
hesitation; but I trust that, from many points of view, the following
pages will be found to justify it.

Judiciously (as I cannot but think) for the purposes of his fiction,
my father has taken up the story of Pausanias at a period subsequent
to the battle of Plataea; when the Spartan Regent, as Admiral of the
United Greek Fleet in the waters of Byzantium, was at the summit of
his power and reputation. Mr. Grote, in his great work, expresses the
opinion (which certainly cannot be disputed by unbiassed readers of
Thucydides) that the victory of Plataea was not attributable to any
remarkable abilities on the part of Pausanias. But Mr. Grote fairly
recognizes as quite exceptional the fame and authority accorded to
Pausanias, after the battle, by all the Hellenic States; the influence
which his name commanded, and the awe which his character inspired.
Not to the mere fact of his birth as an Heracleid, not to the lucky
accident (if such it were) of his success at Plataea, and certainly
not to his undisputed (but surely by no means uncommon) physical
courage, is it possible to attribute the peculiar position which
this remarkable man so long occupied in the estimation of his
contemporaries. For the little that we know about Pausanias we are
mainly dependent upon Athenian writers, who must have been strongly
prejudiced against him. Mr. Grote, adopting (as any modern historian
needs must do) the narrative so handed down to him, never once pauses
to question its estimate of the character of a man who was at one time
the glory, and at another the terror, of all Greece. Yet in comparing
the summary proceedings taken against Leotychides with the extreme,
and seemingly pusillanimous, deference paid to Pausanias by the Ephors
long after they possessed the most alarming proofs of his treason,
Mr. Grote observes, without attempting to account for the fact, that
Pausanias, though only Regent, was far more powerful than any Spartan
King. Why so powerful? Obviously, because he possessed uncommon force
of character; a force of character strikingly attested by every
known incident of his career; and which, when concentrated upon the
conception and execution of vast designs, (even if those designs be
criminal), must be recognized as the special attribute of genius.
Thucydides, Plutarch, Diodorus, Grote, all these writers ascribe
solely to the administrative incapacity of Pausanias that offensive
arrogance which characterized his command at Byzantium, and apparently
cost Sparta the loss of her maritime hegemony. But here is precisely
one of those problems in public policy and personal conduct which the
historian bequeathes to the imaginative writer, and which needs, for
its solution, a profound knowledge rather of human nature than of
books. For dealing with such a problem, my father, in addition to the
intuitive penetration of character and motive which is common to every
great romance writer, certainly possessed two qualifications special
to himself: the habit of dealing _practically_ with political
questions, and experience in the active management of men. His
explanation of the policy of Pausanias at Byzantium, if it be not (as
I think it is) the right one, is at least the only one yet offered. I
venture to think that, historically, it merits attention; as, from the
imaginative point of view, it is undoubtedly felicitous. By elevating
our estimate of Pausanias as a statesman, it increases our interest in
him as a man.

The Author of "Pausanias" does not merely tell us that his hero, when
in conference with the Spartan commissioners, displayed "great natural
powers which, rightly trained, might have made him not less renowned
in council than in war;" but he gives us, though briefly, the
arguments used by Pausanias. He presents to us the image, always
interesting, of a man who grasps firmly the clear conception of a
definite but difficult policy, for success in which he is dependent on
the conscious or involuntary cooperation of men impenetrable to that
conception, and possessed of a collective authority even greater than
his own. To retain Sparta temporarily at the head of Greece was an
ambition quite consistent with the more criminal designs of Pausanias;
and his whole conduct at Byzantium is rendered more intelligible than
it appears in history, when he points out that "for Sparta to maintain
her ascendancy two things are needful: first, to continue the war
by land, secondly, to disgust the Ionians with their sojourn at
Byzantium, to send them with their ships back to their own havens, and
so leave Hellas under the sole guardianship of the Spartans and their
Peloponnesian allies." And who has not learned, in a later school, the
wisdom of the Spartan commissioners? Do not their utterances sound
familiar to us? "Increase of dominion is waste of life and treasure.
Sparta is content to hold her own. What care we, who leads the Greeks
into blows? The fewer blows the better. Brave men fight if they must:
wise men never fight if they can help it." Of this scene and some
others in the first volume of the present fragment (notably the scene
in which the Regent confronts the allied chiefs, and defends himself
against the charge of connivance at the escape of the Persian
prisoners), I should have been tempted to say that they could not have
been written without personal experience of political life; if
the interview between Wallenstein and the Swedish ambassadors in
Schiller's great trilogy did not recur to my recollection as I write.
The language of the ambassadors in that interview is a perfect manual
of practical diplomacy; and yet in practical diplomacy Schiller had
no personal experience. There are, indeed, no limits to the creative
power of genius. But it is perhaps the practical politician who will
be most interested by the chapters in which Pausanias explains his
policy, or defends his position.

In publishing a romance which its author has left unfinished, I may
perhaps be allowed to indicate briefly what I believe to have been
the general scope of its design, and the probable progress of its
narrative.

The "domestic interest" of that narrative is supplied by the story of
Cleonice: a story which, briefly told by Plutarch, suggests one of
the most tragic situations it is possible to conceive. The pathos and
terror of this dark weird episode in a life which history herself
invests with all the character of romance, long haunted the
imagination of Byron; and elicited from Goethe one of the most
whimsical illustrations of the astonishing absurdity into which
criticism sometimes tumbles, when it "o'erleaps itself and falls o'
the other---."

Writing of Manfred and its author, he says, "There are, properly
speaking, two females whose phantoms for ever haunt him; and which,
in this piece also, perform principal parts. One under the name of
Astarte, the other without form or actual presence, and merely a
voice. Of the horrid occurrence which took place with the former, the
following is related:--When a bold and enterprising young man, he won
the affections of a Florentine lady. Her husband discovered the amour,
and murdered his wife. But the murderer was the same night found dead
in the street, and there was no one to whom any suspicion could be
attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, and _these spirits haunted
him all his life after_. This romantic incident is rendered highly
probable by innumerable allusions to it in his poems. As, for instance,
when turning his sad contemplations inwards, he applies to himself the
fatal history of the King of Sparta. It is as follows: Pausanias, a
Lacedaemonian General, acquires glory by the important victory at
Plataea; but afterwards forfeits the confidence of his countrymen by
his arrogance, obstinacy, and secret intrigues with the common enemy.
This man draws upon himself the heavy guilt of innocent blood, which
attends him to his end. For, while commanding the fleet of the allied
Greeks in the Black Sea, he is inflamed with a violent passion for a
Byzantine maiden. After long resistance, he at length obtains her from
her parents; and she is to be delivered up to him at night. She modestly
desires the servant to put out the lamp, and, while groping her way in
the dark, she overturns it. Pausanias is awakened from his sleep;
apprehensive of an attack from murderers he seizes his sword, and
destroys his mistress. The horrid sight never leaves him. Her shade
pursues him unceasingly; and in vain he implores aid of the gods and the
exorcising priests. That poet must have a lacerated heart who selects
such a scene from antiquity, appropriates it to himself, and burdens his
tragic image with it."[2]

It is extremely characteristic of Byron, that, instead of resenting
this charge of murder, he was so pleased by the criticism in which
it occurs that he afterwards dedicated "The Deformed Transformed" to
Goethe. Mr. Grote repeats the story above alluded to, with all the
sanction of his grave authority, and even mentions the name of the
young lady; apparently for the sake of adding a few black strokes to
the character of Pausanias. But the supernatural part of the legend
was, of course, beneath the notice of a nineteenth-century critic; and
he passes it by. This part of the story is, however, essential to
the psychological interest of it. For whether it be that Pausanias
supposed himself, or that contemporary gossips supposed him, to be
haunted by the phantom of the woman he had loved and slain, the fact,
in either case, affords a lurid glimpse into the inner life of
the man;--just as, although Goethe's murder-story about Byron is
ludicrously untrue, yet the fact that such a story was circulated,
and could be seriously repeated by such a man as Goethe without being
resented by Byron himself, offers significant illustration both of
what Byron was, and of what he appeared to his contemporaries. Grote
also assigns the death of Cleonice to that period in the life of
Pausanias when he was in the command of the allies at Byzantium; and
refers to it as one of the numerous outrages whereby Pausanias abused
and disgraced the authority confided to him. Plutarch, however, who
tells the story in greater detail, distinctly fixes the date of its
catastrophe subsequent to the return of the Regent to Byzantium, as a
solitary volunteer, in the trireme of Hermione. The following is his
account of the affair:

"It is related that Pausanias, when at Byzantium, sought, with
criminal purpose, the love of a young lady of good family, named
Cleonice. The parents yielding to fear, or necessity, suffered him to
carry away their daughter. Before entering his chamber, she requested
that the light might be extinguished; and in darkness and silence she
approached the couch of Pausanias, who was already asleep. In so doing
she accidentally upset the lamp. Pausanias, suddenly aroused from
slumber, and supposing that some enemy was about to assassinate him,
seized his sword, which lay by his bedside, and with it struck the
maiden to the ground. She died of her wound; and from that moment
repose was banished from the life of Pausanias. A spectre appeared to
him every night in his sleep; and repeated to him in reproachful tones
this hexameter verse,_Whither I wait thee march, and receive the doom
thou deservest. Sooner or later, but ever, to man crime bringeth
disaster.'_

The allies, scandalized by this misdeed, concerted with Cimon, and
besieged Pausanias in Byzantium. But he succeeded in escaping,
Continually troubled by the phantom, he took refuge, it is said, at
Heraclea, in that temple where the souls of the dead are evoked. He
appealed to Cleonice and conjured her to mitigate his torment. She
appeared to him, and told him that on his return to Sparta he would
attain the end of his sufferings; indicating, as it would seem, by
these enigmatic words, the death which there awaited him. "This"
(adds Plutarch) "is a story told by most of the historians."[3]

I feel no doubt that this version of the story, or at least the
general outline of it, would have been followed by the romance had my
father lived to complete it. Some modification of its details would
doubtless have been necessary for the purposes of fiction. But that
the Cleonice of the novel is destined to die by the hand of her lover,
is clearly indicated. To me it seems that considerable skill and
judgment are shown in the pains taken, at the very opening of the book,
to prepare the mind of the reader for an incident which would have been
intolerably painful, and must have prematurely ended the whole narrative
interest, had the character of Cleonice been drawn otherwise than as we
find it in this first portion of the book. From the outset she appears
before us under the shadow of a tragic fatality. Of that fatality she
is herself intuitively conscious: and with it her whole being is in
harmony. No sooner do we recognise her real character than we perceive
that, for such a character, there can be no fit or satisfactory issue
from the difficulties of her position, in any conceivable combination
of earthly circumstances. But she is not of the earth earthly. Her
thoughts already habitually hover on the dim frontier of some vague
spiritual region in which her love seeks refuge from the hopeless
realities of her life; and, recognising this betimes, we are prepared
to see above the hand of her ill-fated lover, when it strikes her down
in the dark, the merciful and releasing hand of her natural destiny.

But, assuming the author to have adopted Plutarch's chronology,
and deferred the death of Cleonice till the return of Pausanias to
Byzantium (the latest date to which he could possibly have deferred
it), this catastrophe must still have occurred somewhere in the
course, or at the close, of his second volume. There would, in that
case, have still remained about nine years (and those the most
eventful) of his hero's career to be narrated. The premature removal
of the heroine from the narrative, so early in the course of it,
would therefore, at first sight, appear to be a serious defect in the
conception of this romance. Here it is, however, that the credulous
gossip of the old biographer comes to the rescue of the modern artist.
I apprehend that the Cleonice of the novel would, after her death,
have been still sensibly present to the reader's imagination
throughout the rest of the romance. She would then have moved through
it like a fate, reappearing in the most solemn moments of the story,
and at all times apparent, even when unseen, in her visible influence
upon the fierce and passionate character, the sombre and turbulent
career, of her guilty lover. In short, we may fairly suppose that,
in all the closing scenes of the tragedy, Cleonice would have still
figured and acted as one of those supernatural agencies which my
father, following the example of his great predecessor, Scott, did not
scruple to introduce into the composition of historical romance.[4]

Without the explanation here suggested, those metaphysical
conversations between Cleonice, Alcman, and Pausanias, which occupy
the opening chapters of Book II., might be deemed superfluous. But, in
fact, they are essential to the preparation of the catastrophe; and
that catastrophe, if reached, would undoubtedly have revealed to any
reflective reader their important connection with the narrative which
they now appear to retard somewhat unduly.

Quite apart from the unfinished manuscript of this story of Pausanias,
and in another portion of my father's papers which have no reference
to this story, I have discovered the following, undated, memorandum of
the destined contents of the second and third volumes of the work.

PAUSANIAS.

VOL. II.

Lysander--Sparta--Ephors--Decision to recall Pausanias.

Pausanias with Pharnabazes--On the point of success--Xerxes'
daughter--Interview with Cleonice--Recalled.

Sparta--Alcman with his family.

Cleonice--Antagoras--Yields to suit of marriage.

Pausanias suddenly reappears, as a volunteer--Scenes.

VOL. III.

Pausanias removes Cleonice, &c.--Conspiracy against him--Up to
Cleonice's death.

His expulsion from Byzantium---His despair--His journey into
Thrace--Scythians, &c.

Heraclea--Ghost.

His return--to Colonae.

Antagoras resolved on revenge--Communicates with Sparta.

The * * *--Conference with Alcman--Pausanias depends on Helots, and
money.

His return--to death.

This is the only indication I can find of the intended conclusion of
the story. Meagre though it be, however, it sufficiently suggests the
manner in which the author of the romance intended to deal with the
circumstances of Cleonice's death as related by Plutarch. With her
forcible removal by Pausanias, or her willing flight with him from the
house of her father, it would probably have been difficult to reconcile
the general sentiment of the romance, in connection with any
circumstances less conceivable than those which are indicated in the
memorandum. But in such circumstances the step taken by Pausanias migh
have had no worse motive than the rescue of the woman who loved him
from forced union with another; and Cleonice's assent to that step might
have been quite compatible with the purity and heroism of her character.
In this manner, moreover, a strong motive is prepared for that sentiment
of revenge on the part of Antagoras whereby the dramatic interest of the
story might be greatly heightened in the subsequent chapters. The
intended introduction of the supernatural element is also clearly
indicated. But apart from this, fine opportunities for psychological
analysis would doubtless have occurred in tracing the gradual deterio-
ration of such a character as that of Pausanias when, deprived of the
guardian influence of a hope passionate but not impure, its craving for
fierce excitement must have been stimulated by remorseful memories and
impotent despairs. Indeed, the imperfect manuscript now printed, contains
only the exposition of a tragedy. All the most striking effects, all the
strongest dramatic situations, have been reserved for the pages of the
manuscript which, alas, are either lost or unwritten.

Who can doubt, for instance, how effectually in the closing scenes of
this tragedy the grim image of Alithea might have assumed the place
assigned to it by history? All that we now see is the preparation made
for its effective presentation in the foreground of such later scenes,
by the chapter in the second volume describing the meeting between
Lysander and the stern mother of his Spartan chief. In Lysander himself,
moreover, we have the germ of a singularly dramatic situation. How would
Lysander act in the final struggle which his character and fate are
already preparing for him, between patriotism and friendship, his
fidelity to Pausanias, and his devotion to Sparta? Is Lysander's father
intended for that Ephor, who, in the last moment, made the sign that
warned Pausanias to take refuge in the temple which became his living
tomb? Probably. Would Themistocles, who was so seriously compromised in
the conspiracy of Pausanias, have appearedand played a part in those
scenes on which the curtain must remain unlifted? Possibly. Is Alcman the
helot who revealed, to the Ephors, the gigantic plots of his master just
when those plots were on the eve of execution? There is much in the
relations between Pausanias and the Mothon, as they are described in the
opening chapters of the romance, which favours, and indeed renders almost
irresistible, such a supposition. But then, on the other hand, what genius
on the part of the author could reconcile us to the perpetration by his
hero of a crime so mean, so cowardly, as that personal perfidy to which
history ascribes the revelation of the Regent's far more excusable
treasons, and their terrible punishment?

These questions must remain unanswered. The magician can wave his wand
no more. The circle is broken, the spells are scattered, the secret
lost. The images which he evoked, and which he alone could animate,
remain before us incomplete, semi-articulate, unable to satisfy the
curiosity they inspire. A group of fragments, in many places broken,
you have helped me to restore. With what reverent and kindly care,
with what disciplined judgment and felicitous suggestion, you have
accomplished the difficult task so generously undertaken, let me here
most gratefully attest. Beneath the sculptor's name, allow me to
inscribe upon the pedestal your own; and accept this sincere assurance
of the inherited esteem and personal regard with which I am,

My dear Dr. Kennedy,

Your obliged and faithful

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